


Night Terrors

by MagicMage



Series: Joshua Shepard [7]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMage/pseuds/MagicMage
Summary: Joshua Shepard wakes up to a night terror, but it's not his own this time.





	Night Terrors

**Author's Note:**

> I found another thing I didn't post.

For a moment, Joshua had no idea why he was awake. For a moment, Joshua cast around blearily in his mind for a night terror, a reason why he’d woken up. There was no cold sweat, no thudding heartbeat, no panic. He certainly hadn’t woken with a start or woken himself by screaming because Kaidan hadn’t reached over to…

Kaidan?

Suddenly he was painfully aware that Kaidan wasn’t beside him, not where he should be. He couldn’t feel his warmth beside him, and there was no arm over his chest. He reached over to confirm his suspicion, and his hand fell upon sheets, still warm, but clearly empty. He sat up and turned to look at Kaidan’s side of the bed.

For a moment his eyes couldn’t get used to the dark, but then he realised that Kaidan was sitting on his side of the bed, on the edge, with his legs hanging off and clearly slumped forward, his hands gripping his hair.

“Hey you,” Joshua started, moving quietly up behind Kaidan and wrapping an arm around his middle. He was tense, and tensed further when Joshua touched him. When there was no reply, Joshua rested his chin on his shoulder and snuggled into his neck.

For a long time Kaidan just sat there, breathing deeply like he was trying desperately to calm himself. Which he was, Joshua realised now, because the reason he’d woken up was because Kaidan had either cried out or called his name. Usually he was the one who was disturbing Kaidan’s sleep. Not that Joshua would really call it disturbing, as it was one of the rare moments when he could repay a mere sliver of the years of support that Kaidan had given him.

He probably would have fallen asleep again, they were both so silent and focusing so strongly on their breathing, but Kaidan still hadn’t confirmed that he was okay. Sometimes the demons of dreams hung on them both for a longer time than either of them expected. Probably because they weren’t really dreams.

Finally, Kaidan’s hands left his hair and he straightened up a bit, one hand going to mesh with Joshua’s fingers on his stomach as he sighed heavily. “I was going to try _really_ hard not to wake you up.” He laughed derisively.

“I would have been really upset if you hadn’t,” Joshua informed him, rubbing his thumb over Kaidan’s belly.

Joshua wanted to be able to fight off whatever had woken Kaidan and had left him so tense and upset, but there was nothing like trying to fight off an invisible, intangible, foe. He knew, well enough from his own experiences, that the only thing he could do was be there, hold on and hope that he was keeping all the pieces of Kaidan that weren’t together where they were supposed to be. Sometimes Kaidan didn’t want him to hold on, sometimes he didn’t want Kaidan to hold on either. Sometimes they both just really wanted all their pieces to be together and didn’t want to have anyone else hold them there.

Luckily, Joshua thought, this wasn’t one of the times where Kaidan got annoyed at because he was annoyed with himself, so he could just keep him there for a while.

“I need to wash my face,” Kaidan muttered, but he leaned back against Joshua like he didn’t _really_ want to go anywhere.

“You could conveniently forget to wash your face and just lay back down with me,” Joshua offered, but he had already begun to retract his arm so that Kaidan could stand up. When he had, Joshua followed him slowly, giving him enough space while also making sure that he knew he was near. It was a difficult balance to perfect but, somehow, they’d both managed it for the most part.

Joshua leaned on the door to the bathroom as Kaidan stood in front of the sink, for a moment just staring into the mirror. With a soft groan he turned on the tap and shook his head.

“I have to be up in two hours,” Kaidan complained.

Normalcy. Joshua could do that.

“We could always just screw sleeping and have breakfast, coffee…not too much coffee,” Joshua offered. Kaidan glanced over at him as he splashed water on his face, and Joshua thought he saw the ghost of a smirk on his face.

“I don’t think you should be telling me what is or isn’t too much coffee,” Kaidan shot back. Joshua had _definitely_ seen that smirk on his face.

Joshua smiled at Kaidan, who was now investigating his stubble in the mirror, and then turned to go back into their room to find his pajamas. The lack of a rejection to his offer to stay up told him that Kaidan wasn’t planning on going back to sleep.

He’d only managed to get his pants on when Kaidan came back into the bedroom, pace slightly quicker than ‘I’ve finished washing my face and have returned’, and slightly slower than ‘you disappeared from the doorway and my mind tricked me into thinking you’d actually disappeared’. When arms wrapped around his waist tightly and Kaidan’s nose pressed into his neck he realised that Kaidan had only _just_ won the battle of his mind’s efforts to trick him. He’d still felt that moment of panic when he’d looked up at the door and Joshua hadn’t been there.

“I’m still here,” Joshua told him, turning to meet Kaidan’s lips in a gentle kiss and petting Kaidan’s arm as he clung to him.

“You’d better be,” Kaidan replied shakily.

Minds were probably the most terrifying enemy that Joshua had ever encountered.

Not quite normalcy. Joshua could do that too.

So, they both put on their pajamas and went down the stairs, both pretending that Kaidan wasn’t keeping just a bit too close. It wasn’t like they hadn’t done this, the opposite way, many times before. It wasn’t like Kaidan hadn’t been the one making some semblance of breakfast while Joshua watched on just watching, just making sure that _this_ was reality and not whatever horror story his mind had created for him that night.

Joshua made sure to look up, every once in a while, to make sure that Kaidan was still tuned in, still paying attention and that his mind wasn’t wandering into dangerous places. He knew that his own mind tended to wander if he wasn’t jolted back for the first hour or so after waking up from a terror. Each time Kaidan looked up at him with a smile, but each time Joshua was aware that Kaidan’s eyes had not been focused when he turned to look back to him.

He thought there was probably a bit of a saving grace in this, that he experienced it from the other side quite frequently. Part of him knew how to deal with Kaidan, and part of him knew how it felt to be right were Kaidan was.


End file.
